Articles & Tools: ExpressionEngine

I've recently worked with a number of my clients to pitch the ExpressionEngine content management system -- it's by far my favorite, and it has earned a great reputation that is spreading fast. One of my favorite things is its commercial, professional nature: like many products, putting it behind a small pay wall dramatically improves the quality of both the software and the development community that has grown around it.

The fact that EE is already a commercial product also opens the door for third-party developers to build high-quality add-ons -- and make some extra dough in the process, allowing them to offer better support and better software. Here's a list of my favorite commercial EE add-ons, which are the icing on the cake for the thousands of smaller open-source contributions that make the CMS great. There's a price tag on each, but they pay for themselves every time.

Structure

The Structure module allows you to build a simple, flexible site hierarchy, making it easy to share templates across multiple pages. It also makes the control panel editing process leaps and bounds easier for the client to understand: they just see a site map, click on the title of the page, and make any changes they desire. It's not perfect for every site or content type, but for a lot of sites, it makes content management a breeze.

Wygwam

Speaking of editing content, the Wygwam extension hooks EE users up with the best what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor I've encountered so far... and I do a lot of content editing. It integrates seamlessly with EE's upload directories, allows you to create as many different toolbar combos as you need, and works with FieldFrame Matrix, allowing you to create more complex custom fields and more flexible content.

User

For sites that need more complex user signup and management, the User module frees you to build custom templates for all your member-related forms. By default, a lot of these forms are stuck in the somewhat rigid default EE templates (in the 1.x versions, at least), so this really frees you up to build a member interface to your unique needs. Also check out Tag, Rating, Favorites and many more from the same developer, Solspace.

Playa

Perhaps the most sexily named of the EE add-ons, Playa adds some promiscuity to your ExpressionEngine content. Built by the same prolific developer as Wygwam and FF Matrix, it allows you to create robust relationships between your blogs and content types, complete with AJAX filters and search options to ensure that your clients can pinpoint just the right content on a larger site. Although I build a lot of sites that don't need this functionality, this plugin has been my salvation on more complex jobs.

There are tons more great add-ons out there, too. Check out the EE Forums and Devot-EE for a vast database of options -- or just Google "ExpressionEngine" + whatever you need to do. There's something out there for just about everything.

In other news, don't miss my first published extension, Control Panel Home Page Redirect. What are your favorite ExpressionEngine add-ons?

I'm excited to release my first ExpressionEngine extension, the Control Panel Home Page Redirect. I've always found the EE control panel home page largely useless and confusing for my clients, and usually the first thing in my instructions is sending them to a certain tab -- often the one for the Structure module, but sometimes the publish or edit pages as well.

This extension allows you to redirect the home page to the control panel page of your choice, so your users will see exactly what you want them to see upon logging in (or clicking the CP Home link in the header). The settings work just like those of the "New Tab" page - type in the querystring of the control panel page you want to redirect to, save your settings, and you're done!

DOWNLOAD

• Download hdc_cp_home_redirect.zip, version 1.0 (updated Feb 21, 2010)

INSTALLATION

• Intended for use with ExpressionEngine 1.6.8.
• Unzip the downloaded file, then upload the included files to your system folder. The final paths should be /system/extensions/ext.hdc_cp_home_redirect.php and /system/language/english/lang.hdc_cp_home_redirect.php.
• In your control panel, navigate to Admin > Utilities > Extensions. Activate the extension, and click the "Settings" link to set up your redirect.
• Enter the querystring of the page to which you'd like to redirect your CP home page. This usually likes like "C=modules&M=Structure", or something in a similar format. If you need help with this, go to the desired page, click the "New Tab" link in the top right, and copy the value you see in the "New Tab URL" field.

QUESTIONS AND SUPPORT

• Hit up the ExpressionEngine forum thread for this extension for support, questions or suggestions.
• Looking forward to lots of new features and plenty more extensions to come!

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Don't forget to check out the rest of my blog, and hit up my full portfolio site for expert ExpressionEngine development and consulting services. Enjoy!

Lots of big news on the impending release of ExpressionEngine 2.0, the new version of my favorite content management system. It's coming out on December 1, is fully rewritten in CodeIgniter, and has tons of cool upgrades in store for us in terms of functionality and control panel user interface. The commercial license will cost $300 and the non-commercial license $150, an increase of $50 in both cases. And there's a new, cheaper license for building your own portfolio site with EE.

Check out some screenshots and screencasts of the control panel, new pricing, details on code structure and add-on development, and interviews with the development team on the EE Blog and EE Insider.

• Tuning the Engine for EE 2.0 -- EE Blog

My policy on Drupal? If you don't have anything nice to say, politely recommend ExpressionEngine. That said, we'll always have to address Drupal for any client considering their CMS options, and Slate gives us a great list of the system's core problems, through the lens of the Obama administration choosing it for whitehouse.gov. Drupal, says the article, is the anti-Obama: righteous, rigid, disorganized, and the opposite of the open, easy-to-use web.

Sometimes, you're stuck with Drupal. When you have the opportunity to influence your client's decision, this article provides some great Drupal dissent from a trusted source.

• Running the White House web site on Drupal is a political disaster -- Chris Wilson at Slate

One of my favorite tools for content management is drag-and-drop sorting with AJAX -- it's a seamless and intuitive way to allow clients to reorder items on their site, whether they're photos in a gallery, pages within a category or items in a list. When I used to roll my own CMS's, I used Script.aculo.us and jQuery to get the job done. When I dove into ExpressionEngine, it was a feature I immediately missed.

Lucky for me, like everything on my EE wishlist, there's an extension (or, in this case, a module) that makes it happen. The REEOrder module attaches itself to a custom field in your weblog (for example, "entry_rank") and populates it with an integer, which you can then use to order your entries when you display them in a template. On the control panel side, it allows your client to click and drag all the entries in a weblog up and down, ordering them however they'd like from a single screen. Perfect.

» Get the REEOrder module for ExpressionEngine